Alain Elkann Interviews

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND HUMAN PROGRESS. Dambisa Moyo is a Zambian-born economist and writer whose books, articles, and public lectures centre on the creation of wealth in a global economy.

BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER. Architect Lina Ghotmeh was born and raised in Beirut, where she studied at the American University. In 2005, while working in London and collaborating with Ateliers Jean Nouvel and Foster & Partners, she won an international competition to design the Estonian National Museum. Following this victory, she co-founded her first studio, DGT Architects, in Paris. Upon delivery of this project in 2016, she had established Lina Ghotmeh—Architecture. Ghotmeh has won several prestigious awards, has delivered multiple commended projects and designed the Serpentine Pavilion 2023, À Table.

INSPIRED BY BEES. Stephen Buchmann is a pollination ecologist specializing in bees. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Entomology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona and a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London who works towards a world where nature is understood, valued and protected. In his most recent book What a Bee Knows Buchmann explores the thoughts, memories and personalities of bees.

A SENSE OF TIME. Antoine Compagnon is a literary critic, writer, and professor emeritus at the Collège de France, specializing in Marcel Proust. He is Blanche W. Knopf Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. The author of numerous books on literary criticism and history, he was installed as one of the 40 members of the Académie Française known as “the immortals” in May 2023. He was recently appointed the first writer in residence at the musée du Louvre.

CREATING A WEB THAT HOLDS DIFFERENT ELEMENTS TOGETHER. Lee Bul is a contemporary sculpture and installation artist who was born in 1964 to dissident parents under the military dictatorship of Park Chung-Hee in South Korea.  Her work investigates the ways that modern art, architecture and technology have shaped both our real and imagined worlds, and questions patriarchal authority and the marginalization of women.

CONSTRUCTING A SELF THROUGH ART. Jimmy Robert is a visual artist who places the question of the body, racialised, queer, at the centre of his work. Born in 1975 in Guadeloupe, he grew up in France before studying at Goldsmiths College in London and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He currently lives and works in Berlin, teaching at the UdK, Universität der Künste. His photographs, videos, sculptures, texts and works on paper are usually presented in the form of installations that interweave these various media. He is also known for his performances, with which he questions the visibility of Afro-descendants in art history.

INNOVATION IS THE PATH TO PEACE. Chemi Peres is a Managing Partner and was Co-Founder in 1993 of Pitango, Israel's largest venture capital fund with over $2.8 billion under management. Chemi is also Chairman of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, an independent non-profit, non-governmental, and non-political organization founded in 1996 by his father, Nobel Peace Laureate and former President of Israel Shimon Peres. In 2021 Chemi was awarded the prestigious Reinhard Mohn Prize by the Bertelsmann Stiftung in recognition of his outstanding commitment to promoting innovation that serves both business and society.

THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN. Giuliano da Empoli is an Italian and Swiss political essayist, journalist and novelist. The founding chairman of Volta, a think tank based in Milan, he was an advisor to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi from 2014 to 2016. Now he is a professor at Sciences Po, The Paris Institute of Political Studies. In 2022 da Empoli published in French his debut novel Le mage du Kremlin, for which he received Le Grand Prix du Roman from l'Académie française. 

THE TALENT OF LA NIJINSKA. Lynn Garafola is a dance historian and critic. Professor Emerita of Dance at Barnard College, Columbia University, she is the author of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance. A regular contributor of articles and essays to both scholarly and general interest publications, she is the former editor of the book series "Studies in Dance History," the founder of the Columbia University seminar Studies in Dance, and the curator of exhibitions about the New York City Ballet, Jerome Robbins, and, most recently, the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Her latest book La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern is the first to document the full scope of Bronislava Nijinska's creative work and rewrites the history of Euro-American ballet, beginning with Serge Diaghilev's celebrated Ballets Russes in the early 20th century and continuing until the 1960s.

A MAJOR PHILANTHROPIST. John A. Paulson founded Paulson & Co., an investment management firm based in New York. In 2007 his multi-billion payoff shorting the overheated U.S. housing market made him a global industry superstar. He remains active in the markets.

A VERY SPECIAL MOMENT FOR MILANO. Gianfranco Maraniello is an art historian, contemporary art critic and curator. In May 2022 he was selected to be the Director of the Modern and Contemporary Art Museums in Milano, Italy, which includes Museo del Novecento, GAM Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Palazzo Morando | Costume Moda Immagine, Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano and Studio Museo Francesco Messina.

REGIONAL SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST. Dr. Sanam Vakil is the Deputy Director of the Middle East North Africa programme at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London where she leads project work on Iran and Gulf Arab dynamics. Iranian by birth, Dr. Vakil has lived most of her life outside of the Middle East. She obtained a Master's and then a PhD in international relations at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC. She then lived in Germany with her husband before moving to London, and she commutes to Bologna twice a month to teach for Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe.

ADDICTED TO WRITING. Benedetta Cibrario was born in Florence, Italy, in 1962, to a father from Turin and a mother from Naples. She is a writer who lives in London. Her books include Rossovermiglio (2007; Campiello Prize 2008), which was followed by Sotto cieli noncuranti (2009; Rapallo Carige Prize 2010), Lo Scurnuso (2011), L'uomo che dormiva al parco (2012) and Il Rumore del Mondo (finalist at Premio Strega 2019). Her latest work, Per ogni parola perduta,was published in 2022.

DOCUMENTING OUR DISPLACEMENT. The filmmaker Amos Gitai was born in Israel in 1950 where his father Munio Gitai Weintraub was a prominent Bauhaus architect and his mother Efratia Margalit an intellectual, a storyteller and a teacher. Amos trained as an architect in Haifa and at UC Berkeley in America before becoming internationally known for his documentaries and feature films about the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and personal and collective memory.

A WORLD OF GOOD TASTE. Tino Zervudachi is an internationally acclaimed decorator with an eclectic aesthetic. He has an illustrious clientele that includes some of the world’s most discerning business people, art collectors and bohemian aristocrats. His designs can be seen in sumptuous homes around the world.

CHAMPION OF THE REMARKABLE. Luke Syson is Director and Marlay Curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University since 2019.  From antiquity to the present day, the Fitzwilliam houses a world-renowned collection of over half a million beautiful works of art, masterpiece paintings and historical artefacts.

NOMADIC BY NATURE. Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is an advocate for the greater inclusion of indigenous peoples and their knowledge and traditions in the global movement to fight the effects of climate change. On September 1st 2022 she received the International DVF Award in Venice.

A MOTHER TELLING STORIES OF WAR. Clarissa Ward is a British-American television journalist. She is currently chief international correspondent for CNN. She was with CBS News, based in London, and before her CBS News position, Ward was a Moscow-based news correspondent for ABC News programs.

THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTION. Marco Balich is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Balich Wonder Studio. In 1989 Balich organised the extraordinary Pink Floyd concert on a floating stage in his birthplace of Venice that was broadcast on TV to 100 million viewers worldwide. Today he is credited with directing and producing a record number of 14 Olympic Ceremonies and 12 Regional Games, as well as producing several other large-scale events all around the globe.

A SCENT OF WISDOM. Moin Mir is a London based writer of Indian origin. His work is influenced by his grandfather, who was a scholar of Sufism. Mir’s most recent book The Lost Fragrance of Infinity is an inspirational story about the rebuilding of a young man's life, conveyed through Sufi metaphor and symbolism.